Next move: Back to the drawing board. Oh, heck: I can’t draw. Back to the laptop key board.

Listening to: http://www.radioparadise.com Nancy over at Laughing Maus — who is also a member of my writers’ circle here – turned me on to this commercial free, listener supported indie station. They play an amazingly eclectic mix of music. Check it out (you’ll thank me later).

Trait I most admire in others: Grace under pressure.

Trait I find saddest: Fear of change. Unwillingness to admit a mistake. I know that’s two traits, but I can’t decide between them.

Weirdest personal trait: About two years ago, I began to wake throughout the night while dreaming. I can recall every dream in vivid detail.

“But Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men
Gang aft agley.” –Robert Burns To a Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest with the Plough

Feste the Fool: [Singing]
“He that has and a little tiny wit–With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,–Must make content with his fortunes fit,For the rain it raineth every day.” —Shakespeare King Lear, Act III, Scene 2

“Man plans; God laughs.” —Anonymous

We’re renovating our apartment, and line up all the dates for workmen and repairs months in advance. We decide that once it starts will be the perfect time for me to fly back to America and visit my family. It’s finally about to begin, when suddenly…

We receive a phone call that my mother-in-law is in the hospital. She lives about 1 1/2 hours south of us, so Uwe and I take turns heading down there. He spends a night in a hotel. I arrive by train the next day and take over so that Uwe can drive home to work.

We need to move Mama into assisted living; I volunteer to go meet with the nursing home staff. For anyone contemplating life in a foreign language, the year I spent in submersion classes learning to speak fluent German pays off now. It would be scary not to understand what is happening, and awful not to be able to help my husband.

Her doctors think she needs an operation and schedule a day for it. Then the next time I go down, they inform us they’ve decided not to operate. She is moved out of the ICU. And then back into the ICU. And then back out of the ICU. Uwe deals with banks and Mama’s newspaper deliveries and the phone company. We need to keep updating the nursing home. Each day is a roller coaster experience.

Should I cancel or push back my flight to the US? I keep asking, but Uwe continues to assure me I can head out as planned.

Germany has record flooding. It rains every day and the train runs alongside the banks of the Neckar River. I have the surreal experience of watching the waters keep rising, along with our concerns about Mama.

In the meantime I try to write. I see massage patients. But I’m shocked when my sister announces my nephew’s birthday has arrived. I know it’s still a few days away, and then l look at a calendar. I have the date and what day of the week it is both wrong. I lost 48 hours somewhere.

Friday the tile layer begins work in the hallway. Saturday I go to my monthly writers’ group and come home to find an email about an award. Sunday I take my last train ride. Monday the tile layer returns and Mama can finally leave the hospital. Uwe drives down to get his mother settled in and buy furniture, etc. for her new digs. I remain home to hold down the fort. Tuesday the next Handwerker arrives and for two days walls are fixed in the next room (as I type these words. Literally.)

I am grateful for the completely unexpected VERY INSPIRING BLOGGER Award. It’s a glad moment in what have been harried days and nights. The wonderful, creative Jen Payne at http://randomactsofwriting.wordpress.com has honored me with the nomination. It’s a lovely recognition. It doesn’t involve answering or posing questions. Best of all, it arrived at the height/depth of 2 weeks of insanity. This award provided me with light for the end of the tunnel, letting me know that maybe I’m not just viewing the headlights of an oncoming train ….

The word inspire means to “fill with the urge or ability to do or feel something, especially to do something creative.” I feel my creativity slowly returning as the flood waters in some spots finally begin to recede.

Heartfelt thanks again to Jen at Random Acts of Writing [+ art] for the nomination. I’m delighted to pass on the compliment by following the award rules and nominating 15 other bloggers.

VERY INSPIRING BLOGGER RULES
• Display the award logo on your blog.
• Link back to the person who nominated you.
• Nominate 15 other bloggers for this award and link to them.
• Notify those bloggers of the nomination and the award’s requirements.

May my nominations bring you amusement, relief, or whatever you may be needing at the moment. It’s great to be part of this community! (Written June 12th, 2013)

A few days ago I gleefully told my husband, “Blogging is fun! There are such creative people out there and I’m having a blast discovering them!” And then the next day I received notice that Jaded Apothecary (someone who embodies creative) nominated me for a Liebster Award.

The Liebster Award is intended to recognize up-and-coming blogs, particularly those with fewer than 200 followers. The rules are as follows: Post 11 facts about yourself. Answer the questions posed by your nominator. Pass the award on to 11 new recipients. Pose 11 new questions to your bloggers.

Next, post a copy of the badge on your blog (you can find several options by doing a Google image search for “Liebster Award”). Finish it all up by notifying your selected nominees, and be sure to include links to the originating blog, as well as to those of the new recipients.

First off, thanks to http://jadedapothecary.wordpress.com/ for the nomination. This mysterious blogger stays private while questioning the world in a funny and informed fashion. Jaded Apothecary, your own acceptance post for the award is a hard act to follow! Here are my answers to your 11 queries:

1. Do you feel like you were destined to become a writer? And by that I mean, do you kind of feel like that scene in Sister Act 2: Back In The Habit when Whoopi Goldberg tells Lauryn Hill that if she wakes up in the morning and can only think about singing, then she’s meant to be a singer? Is Whoopi Goldberg saying to you, “You’re meant to be a writer, girl!”…or guy?

I’ve wanted to be a writer since the age of 6. I took way too long to get serious about it.

2. Since I can’t cook, I’d love to read about your worst cooking disaster. Go on now. Make me feel better about myself.

It was a dessert soufflé. I mastered savory soufflés so easily that I thought, How hard could it be to make one for dessert? I disappeared into the kitchen with 2 baskets of strawberries and good intentions. Pride goeth before a fall… and fall is exactly what my soufflé did. I came back out 3 hours later (really) with something flat that had the color and consistency of a rubber eraser. That is the first and last time I ever tried to make a dessert soufflé as the failure scarred me for life!

3. If you were a tree, what tree would you be? And don’t you roll your eyes at me. They ask this question during corporate “development” sessions for a reason. I don’t know what that reason is, but still. I’d like to know your answer.

Sugar maple.

4. What’s the last television show you gave up on watching because you just couldn’t deal with it anymore?

24 Hours. The word ‘jingoistic’ comes to mind.

5. What’s your favorite holiday?

Thanksgiving, hands down.

6. Did you, like me, have a panic attack (but a good one) when you first realized that people in other countries were reading your work?

No, I had that panic attack when my husband first talked me into becoming a blogger.

7. If you could make a difference in the world (and I’m talking about a genuine, magical difference…not the Miss America crap), what would it be?

Convince people that we really are all connected. There is no “other”.

8. I can’t watch the commercial for the ASPCA without crying uncontrollably for 20 minutes, clutching my own dog and loving on him until he literally forces himself away from me, and, sometimes, placing a quick call to my therapist. Can you? I mean, it’s sad!

I leave the room when reports on animals caught in man-made disasters come on.

9. Do you have any friends in your life who date back to your childhood?

Yes!

10. What’s your favorite color, and what do you think it says about you as a person?

What does it say about me that I actually have several favorite colors?

11. When you travel, do you ever wish you could pull someone aside, open their suitcase, pull out a different outfit, throw it at them, and then send them to the restroom shouting, “You will change into this right now, because as things stand, you look ridiculous. Who let you believe this was okay? You’re in an airport, ma’am! Pajama jeans and an old Body Glove t-shirt are unacceptable!” Explain.

No. But I’ve wanted to strangle fellow travelers more than once for holding up the plane while they try to stuff their obnoxiously oversized carry-on luggage into the overhead bin. Which part of “must fit into space above or below the seat” did they not understand?

And here are 11 factoids about me:

(Photo from Wikipedia)

I’m a southpaw.

My father worked for the Forest Service, so as a kid I spent every summer in the woods.

We had flying squirrels as pets every summer. (See #2)

My siblings and I agree: we had the perfect childhoods. (See #2 & #3)

I’ve probably watched the film Blade Runner 50 times.

I used to speak conversational Spanish and Italian, but right now German takes up most of the brain space reserved for foreign languages.

I can laugh at myself.

I’ve been licensed as a massage therapist for 25 years. It’s the perfect work for me: it combines science (treatments for injuries, anatomy) with intuition (yes, there is a mind-body-spirit connection).

I’m named for a grandfather who was struck by lightening – twice.

I’m sometimes overcome with Happy Feet! (Steve Martin fans will get this reference.)

My husband is German and no one does cake and coffee better than the Germans. For our stateside wedding party we had the bakery make 6 different cakes rather than the traditional white one. We had chocolate, coconut, yellow, spice, carrot cake, and so on… and asked the bakery to misspell our names on all but one of them. Since we’re Jadi & Uwe it was an easy request.

I nominate the following bloggers for the Liebster Award. Thanks to each of you for inspiring me, as well as giving me a good reason to turn on the laptop each morning:

http://lasesana.wordpress.com/

http://thatgirlwhoreadsbooks.com/

http://cvheerden.wordpress.com/ Her wonderful blog Bridging Worlds currently has 120 followers and I’m happy that fact makes it eligible for this nomination.

http://unpackedwriter.com/

http://travel-stained.com/

http://thinktome.wordpress.com/

http://volunteerfringe.com/

http://themodernmanuscript.wordpress.com/

http://wearenotconnected.wordpress.com/

http://alaskamexicoandbeyond.wordpress.com/

http://windhorseblog.wordpress.com/

Questions for my nominees:

Do you want to live to be 100?

If you dream that you can fly, where are you flying to?

What is ‘your’ song?

If you could climb in a time machine, where would you go?

Do you need a private space to write, or can you write anywhere?

Are there foods you absolutely refuse to eat?

Do you have a book you reread over and over?

What person or past experience makes you sentimental?

What is the best vacation you’ve ever had?

Do you believe in reincarnation?

If yes, what do you hope (or worry) you’ll come back as? If no, what do you think comes next?

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Jadi Campbell

Jadi Campbell lives in Germany and spent a decade writing as European Correspondent. She received a B.A. in English Literature from the Honors College of the University of Oregon. Jadi has traveled across 4 continents with her husband and begun exploring their 5th. Travel and life abroad provide the perfect inspiration for her tales. Her novels are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, and Grounded. They are available on Amazon. You can go to her author page to read reviews by readers and learn more about Jadi.